Extended Q&A

Totally Ripa’d

Kelly Ripa, the unendingly cheerful 41-year-old TV host, can’t seem to stop smiling. It’s no surprise: she’s helped turn Live with Regis into Live! with Kelly—all the while raising a family.

GEORGE WAYNE:Who would be your “dream” choice to join you on your morning show?

KELLY RIPA: After you, because I can see already that we have great chemistry, I would have to say a distant second—if it could be anyone in the universe—would be Anderson Cooper.

G.W.I thought you would have said your husband, Mark Consuelos.

K.R. No one would make me happier than Mark, but he values our marriage and he says that he doesn’t see how we could stay married and both do that show.

G.W.You know one of the most anticipated movies this June is one calledMagic Mike.

K.R. Yes! I heard about it—my husband knows the real guy.

G.W.I was about to say your husband ought to have had a cameo in this film—after all he was a male stripper. I found out in the National Enquirer that your husband was once a go-go boy, a male stripper. How did you find out?

K.R. He told me.

G.W.Your husband told you that he used to wear a banana hammock, donkey thong, as a go-go boy?

K.R. He was. A lot of hot guys in Hollywood have done that. He was straight out of college, and he went to Notre Dame and finished his degree at the University of South Florida. So, there he was in South Florida, he’s gorgeous, looking to break into show business, so he started off as a roadie to a group of these guys, and then they talked him into stripping.

G.W.Have you ever seen the pictures of Mark in his banana-hammock days?

K.R. Oh yeah. I even have an old calendar pinup of him.

G.W.I wanna see it.

K.R. He is so unbelievably gorgeous, with a Mexican father, Italian mother born in Spain and raised in Italy, and I will never give him up.

G.W.How long did you serve under the curmudgeon Regis Philbin? And would you say this job was an accident?

K.R. Definitely this job is an accident; I was a fill-in. I was on soaps for 11 years and got a call from Angela Shapiro, who was then at ABC Daytime, to come sit with Regis. I worked right down the street on All My Children, so I said sure. And so I became one of those people they would call when one of their guest hosts canceled.

G.W.You were like Plan B.

K.R. I was more like Plan C—when all else fails, call Kelly. She is a good talker, she is easy to deal with, and she works right down the street on a soap opera. It was literally that simple. At the end of the day, I think this is the only talk show I would want to be on. I have been doing this for 11 years.

G.W.And getting paid a lot of money.

K.R. I have been very fortunate with my career. Ever since I moved to New York, I have always been able to earn a living. I feel so fortunate. I’m just a practical girl from New Jersey.

G.W.And you got out of that soap business just in time. That is almost an extinct career, “soap-opera actor.”

K.R. I know. It is very sad. I have been very emotional about it all. Not only did I meet my husband doing a soap opera, we had our children during that time. It was like home for us. And the soap-opera genre launched so many careers. It’s a great training ground. A director knows when he is hiring an actor with a soap-opera background that they are getting someone who knows their lines, knows where to stand, knows their approach to the camera, and they are gonna hang up their own clothes and return it to Wardrobe. I will never forget my first time shooting a sitcom. I was hanging all my clothes up, and Pat Field walked in and said, “What are you doing? Oh, you’ve come from a soap. Those are the only ones who hang up their wardrobe.”

G.W.Your impersonation of Pat Field is hysterical. But I still want to know why is it that you and Mark chose to elope? Was your blue-collar dad upset at the news that Mark was a stripper?

K.R. No, no, my parents worship Mark. My husband is probably the most responsible, hard-working, diligent person I know. He is very smart and stable. We eloped because his brother and sister had also just had weddings, everybody had just got married, our characters on All My Children were married to each other three different times already. We felt as if we had endured enough weddings. We didn’t feel like we needed the big party.

G.W.Are you strict parents?

K.R. We are kind of strict. We are a little bit old-school that way. There is only one computer in the entire house for the family to share. The computer is just for homework. They are allowed to TiVo but watch TV only on the weekends. TV during the week interferes with schoolwork. There is too much of that “Let me hurry through, slop this out on the page so I can go watch some television.”

G.W.You were never “Miss Popular” in high school?

K.R. I didn’t belong to any clique. I was in musical theater, but we weren’t the popular kids on campus.

G.W.You really didn’t answer my question on your relationship with the curmudgeon Regis Philbin earlier. So I will tell you that the only reason you and Regis got along, where you succeeded and Kathie Lee Gifford failed, is that you knew better than to ever, ever upstage Regis. You knew your role there was to be supplicant.

K.R. I enjoyed all of Regis, and his storytelling. And Regis and Kathie Lee made me laugh all the time. She sent me the most beautiful note when I got the show. She said, “Everybody in this business has their moment, and this is yours.” She was so lovely.

G.W.And now you have that stage all to your own. You must be happy.

K.R. That job is still a partnership. I do have experience with co-hosts coming in for days or weeks at a time, so it hasn’t been that different.

G.W.Any re-inventions? Any new touches?

K.R. Well, the show has a format. It’s a format that has worked for so many years. It’s been fashioned-up a little bit. After we get back from a week in Banff, Canada, we will have a new set.

G.W.And that ought to be awesome. Thanks, Kel—and by the way, you really know how to work that frock.